Disconnect is a weekly column in which Tech in Asia’s Charlie Custer pokes at holes, plays devil’s advocate, or otherwise attempts to rain on the tech industry’s parade.
In my Disconnect column last week, I went after the downsides of our dawning virtual reality age pretty hard. But I’m going to bash it again this week, because another very creepy VR possibility occurred to me this morning.
The gamers among our readers are probably already aware that technology exists that lets you upload photos of your own face to stick onto your virtual avatar in games. This is especially popular in sports games like the EA Sports series FIFA, which explains the technology thusly:
EA Sports’ “Game Face” feature; upload your photo and get a virtual avatar that looks just like you.
Non-gamers have probably also seem glimpses of this sort of thing with face-swapping apps and things like this Baidu app that maps masks and other faces onto your own in real-time. This technology isn’t perfect yet, but it’s getting better. Give it another decade and I’ll bet it’ll be capable of producing reasonably lifelike (if not totally convincing) results.
Think about that technology and the ways it will intersect with VR pornography for a few seconds, and you’ll start to get extremely creeped out. Because here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be your face that you upload.
VR porn as it exists now already provides (apparently) a reasonable enough facsimile to sex that it’s enough for some men to consider giving up regular sex. But imagine, given another few years of technological development, people having the ability to insert the face of anyone onto the bodies of virtual porn stars they’re – ahem – having an “experience” with.
Anyone. Their favorite movie star. Their crazy ex. The one from high school that got away. You.
Yes, I honestly think that if you’re an even moderately attractive woman (or man, probably), in ten years there will be people who are having sex with “you” in virtual reality, without you even knowing it.
Oh god.
That’s creepy enough in and of itself, but it’s especially horrifying if we consider the psychological effects it might have. Remember, even with our current far-from-perfect VR technology, the experiences are real enough that children straight-up remember VR experiences like they were real when asked about them a few weeks later.
That effect is only going to get more pronounced as VR tech gets better and becomes more immersive. So giving people the ability to virtually have sex with someone they know in real life might lead to them feeling as though they have a real relationship with that person. If VR tricks somebody into thinking they have a real relationship with a movie or porn star they never met, that’s mostly just sad. But if VR tricks somebody into thinking they have a real relationship with a pretty co-worker (for example), that could be downright dangerous.
Best case scenario it leads to some very hurt feelings. Worst case scenario it leads somewhere stalkey and rapey.
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